I have a Chieftec, too. Nothing to be ashamed of Radeonman. Buck up brother !

I have also cut the grills out and removed the plastic fan mounts. I have my fans (1 intake and exhaust) mounted using EAR isolators. The holes that are left in the case after removing the plastic fan mounts looked like this (X and Y being the holes and the other lines representing the edges of the hole from the cut-away grill):

Code:

X/---------\ | |Y | | | | | |Y X\---------/

I was able to use the EAR isolators in the X holes and drilled new 3/16" holes in the case in the Z position pictured below:

Code:

X/---------\Z | |Y | | | | | |Y X\---------/Z

Someday I'll get around to posting pictures of this.....

If you go this route with your fans, you could put the novibes on the floor of the case and use the lower front intake for HDD cooling. That way you are not adding the noise of another fan.

Re: GPU cooling, are you opposed to a real Zalman bracket to have the fan blow across the card? How free is the airflow of your current fan (if you have the intake side blocked, it could limit the CFM...same issue if there is no place for the air to exhaust as it comes off the Zalman cooler)?

Re: Alpha fan direction. You will really have to give it a try. I also have an Alpha and with my CPU fan at 12V, it made only 2° difference in the max temp whether pushing or pulling air. But at 5V, it made a >5° difference. Can't remember the exact numbers right now....sorry.

I wonder if your cooling issues (GPU, HDD, & CPU) may be related to your case airflow. I know you have the door off, but even then you may just be pushing hot air around in the case. Worth considering I guess.

A 120mm is gonna be really hard to fit...2 92mm fit perfectly after removing the fan mount. Soundwise, a huge improvement over 2x 80mm but still can't touch the 120mm. I think the two 92mm @5v will push the most air though.

So I still own my cheiftec dragon. Currently, I'm jealous of Ralph's machine he recently posted. I might have a take a trip to LA and "borrow" his computers. (Don't tell him.)

Sorry dude, you're busted. Feel free to bring your box over here and we'll work on it though. Ambient temps here are probably 10°F cooler than where you are, but of course you have the "dry heat" advantage.

Radeonman wrote:

Current Temps:Mobo: 50Cpu (full load): 60HD : 45Current Ambient: 32

I consider these all too high and would like to lower them. They are, however, within the safety margin so I can contemplate my next move.

I'd say they're on the hot side too. The "Gaming Rig" in my sig lives in an Antec SX10x0 (physically identical to your Dragon) type of case. All my temps (except the ambient) are almost exactly 10°C cooler than yours even though we're running very similar setups. I'm running a P4 2.66B OC'ed to 3.0GHz and am using an 8942 on it. I'm using an L1A though, as compared to your NMB. The NMBs are nice and quiet but they don't work well on an 8942 (I tried). First thing I'd do would be put an L1A on your 8942 ans see what happens. You can always put it on a Fanmate and play with the speed.

The other issue is your case ventilation/airflow. You really should have a couple of case fans in there, you're just not ventilating the hot air with your current setup. These cases have excellent airflow so it doesn't take too much fannage to keep things cool. I'd throw at least 3 18cfm NMBs in there, two on the back as exhausts and one in front of where your HDD is mounted as an intake. The intake will mostly serve to cool your HDD. You should notice a nice difference in your temps by doing this, and hardly any increase in air noise.

Radeonman wrote:

I am not aware of a way to check the video card's temperatures, and would be happy to know of a program that would query the radeon's little diode (assuming it has one), as I'm guessing it is also running hot (the heatsink is toasty). The side of my case is currently off. I have no case fans working.

There is no internal sensor on the vidcard. You'd need to get an external temp probe (like the Digidoc thingies) and place one of it's sensors as close to the GPU as possible.

Radeonman wrote:

The cooling I do have in place is the ZM80a with a fan bolted beneath the heatsink (i.e. between the sound card and video card). From what I can tell this is doing me virtually no good, and I am, therefore, running the Radeon 9700 virtually passive. If anyone has any sneaky ways of bolting the 80mm fan in a different spot (I'd prefer not to do the flying Zalman-Bracket wannabe trick), I'm all ears.

I'd bet that by increasing your case airflow (as I outlined above) you'd increase the performance of the ZM-80 as well. Currently the hot air has nowhere to go so the cooler isn't working too well. Why are you resistant to adding a Zalman fan bracket above your vidcard? These work well and with a 5V L1A you'd certainly never hear the fan.

Radeonman wrote:

The CPU has the Alpha heatsink on it and an NMB fan. I haven't tried switching the orientation on the fan to see if it works better pushing air into the sink as opposed to pulling air out (the orientation the directions claim you should use it in and which I've left it as for now). Again, any suggestions here would be welcome.

As I said above, swap out the NMB for an L1A + Fanmate. The NMBs don't flow enough air to work well with the 8942s.

Radeonman wrote:

Finally, I'm jealous of Ralf's 120mm fans. The dragon, as many of you know, comes with spots for dual 80s on the front and back of the case. However, since banging out the grills for the fans, I've become disenchanted with the plastic mounts and stopped using fans in those slots. Removing the plastic mounts has left me with irregular holes that don't seem to match up well with anything. My question here is: Is cutting into this area to set up a 120mm fan (at least on the back) a realistic option? I can get measurements on various place if necessary, but trying to get a general sense of things before I start making more detailed plans (and try and find a good 120mm fan).

120mm fans will not fit on that case. 92mms will, and I even have a set of templates to locate them in the best possible configuration.

If you want to stick with 80mm fans, do what the others have suggested and throw away those awful plastic brackets, drill a set of mounting holes and mount them to the case with elastomer grommets.

/Ralf wanders off down the hall, muttering under his breath......"OK, now I'm going to install some deadbolts on my doors and make sure my guns are loaded. Gotta protect my PCs..., gotta protect my PCs..."

aphonos, <snip> I see you aren't using both in or out fan spots, do you use something to block these holes? (what do you use?)

Front Top: L1A blowing across HDD suspended below the FDD/HDD cage.
Front Bottom: Cut grill, and left the hole open for airflow.

Rear Top: L1A-exhaust.
Rear Bottom: Covered--to help direct airflow and prevent it serving as an intake vent. (I cut the grill out and drilled the holes on the lower fan hole in case I want to play around with my fan config, add a duct, etc. at some point in the future, but then covered it up with a piece of mass loaded vinyl--cardboard works, too.)

Why use 92mm or 120mm fans in an application where an 80mm fan may work just fine and push sufficient CFM?

Perhaps we are struck with Tim-The-Toolman-Taylor (from US sitcom Home Improvement) Syndrome and just want "more power." I'm guilty of this in areas of life other than computer fans. *sheepish grin*

I know someone will point to the relationship between CFM and noise at various voltages between 80mm and the larger fans, but if your case takes 80mm fans (which are generally quieter than 92 or 120mm fans when run at the same low voltages) you may want to try putting in 80mm fans and checking temps before going to the trouble to cut a big ol' hole in your case for a bigger (and noisier) fan. ...FWIW

The fan I wish to mount in the front (same 92mm L1A as for the back) does not have flanges on both sides of the fan.

Huh?

What kind of 92mm L1A is this? I've never seen one w/o mounting flanges on both sides. The only Panaflos I've ever seen with a mounting flange on only one side are those Augmented 80mm L1As like the kind Thermaltake is using on their new HSF.

Radeonman wrote:

This means I'll either have to cut out room for almost the entire fan in the case or find some other way to mount it - any suggestions?

I can't visualize what you mean here. Do you mean that you'll have to mount it outside the front case wall? Clarification please!

So just to clarify, again: you got 92mm L1A Panaflos that are just like the 80mm versions on the TT HSF? Where did you get them, how much were they and why did you choose them over a "regular" L1A?

And now I can visualize what you're talking about too. When you go to work up a mounting setup for these fans you should read this technical paper about Augmernted Fan Technology. Note that they recommend mounting the fans "half in and half out" of the boundary (the front case wall for you) wall. There's a diagram (figure 7) showing this at the bottom of the page.

Good luck to you. I tried the 80mm versions of these a few years ago but wasn't impressed with them in a head-to-head comparison with regular L1As. The augmented L1As did flow more air than a regular L1A but they were also noticably noisier than the regular Panaflos at the same voltage. The "noise" was a lot of air turbulence noise, not mechanical. I started reducing the voltage until they were as quiet as a regular L1A but by then the airflow was about the same as a regular L1A too (measured by case temp). So it ended up being a wash. I had some $15 Panaflos that cooled as well as, and were as quiet as my regular $8 Panaflos!

I never decoupled a whole PSU, but I once decoupled a big coil in a PSU (using rubber washers and earplugs). If you lived in a country where PFC is mandatory, you would soon discover that some passive PFC PSUs buzz loudly.

If your PSU doesn't buzz, decoupling the fan should be enough. But If you want to decouple the whole PSU for some reason, you might find this interesting, though it might be hard to find in the US. But it's just a piece of rubber anyway.

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